Each
week, this column discusses the principles of different movements,
including the environment, digital and food justice movements. This
week, we’re discussing the 12th environmental justice principle,
which “affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to
clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with
nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities and
providing fair access for all to the full range of
resources.”

Recently,
I found myself watching old environmentalist public service
announcements from the 1970s, including the “Give a Hoot, Don’t
Pollute” campaign and the “Crying Indian” campaign. I couldn’t
help but laugh at the dated quality of the commercials. The “Give a
Hoot” commercial featured a massive brown owl dancing around in
nature singing with children. And the “Crying Indian” commercial
(the one with the man dressed up like a Native American crying a
single tear over littering) displayed its own special brand of
‘70s-based racism; according to this commercial, while the rest of
the world bought cars and blue jeans, Native Americans were busy
crying over people not throwing away their garbage.

But
on a more disturbing level, not one of the “Give a Hoot” videos
pointed to industrial pollution in any way. In fact, the “Give a
Hoot” commercials relied on an all too common narrative that nature
is a pristine glorious national park that we travel to for vacations.
It’s not the air we breathe sitting in a bus on the way to school
or the teeny plots of grass sitting outside our front doors. And
it’s most certainly not the community that the oil refinery up the
road is releasing heavy pollution into.

The
“Crying Indian” video showed a few brief shots of industrial
pollution, but again, the greatest “injustice” in the commercial,
in fact, the moment that makes the “Indian” cry, comes when a man
in a car throws a bag of half eaten food at the “Indian.” The
message of this commercial, like the “Give a Hoot” commercials,
is clearly directed at individual action against individual
pollution. Industrial pollution created by massive corporations went
unaddressed in corporate media, even back then.

In
the years since these commercials were made, things have not changed
much. While there has been a push toward “green economies,”
industrial pollution is still far off the mainstream radar. This has
created an unprecedented opportunity for corporations most guilty of
heavy pollution to create their own “green” media campaigns. For
example, that beautiful green and yellow flower that is now the BP
logo cost the corporation $7 million. According to the BBC News, BP
is also expecting to invest an additional $25 million a quarter to
maintain the branding. But it has become perhaps one of the most
recognized logos of all the different oil corporations.

And
of course, most of us are familiar by now of T. Boone Pickens’
famous commercials advocating for the switch in the United State’s
energy strategy from dirty oil to “natural gas.” These calls have
earned him respect from many in corporate media as an “unlikely
environmentalist,” even as the horrific environmental dangers of
fracking (which is how natural gas is removed from the ground) are
being leaked out of communities with a terrifying frequency.

That
media campaigns around the environment are being largely controlled
by corporations doing the worst polluting only makes sense if we go
back to those old ‘70s commercials. In creating a divide between
“nature” and cities and positioning cities as a place where
nature doesn’t exist, oil corporations have an easy way to get
people to not pay attention to what they are doing. Even worse,
because so much of the industrial pollution in cities are located
around communities of color, many people feel like if pollution does
happen, it’s really not worth investing time and energy in cleaning
up. Specifically, it’s better to fight to keep something from being
lost (the National Park for vacations) than to fight for something
that is already lost (heavily polluted urban areas).

The
12th environmental justice principle attempts to make visible and
help repair that disconnect between how we understand what nature is
and the actual pollution our communities are living with on a daily
basis. By “affirming the need for urban and rural ecological
policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in
balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our
communities, and providing fair access for all to the full range of
resources,” environmental justice advocates are very clearly
refusing the traditional narratives around what “environment”
needs to be “saved.” Nature is not something that rich people get
to visit on vacations — it is something that exists in all
communities, and all of those communities require resources (e.g.,
media campaigns) to “save” their environment.

An
example of how this principle is put into action would be the work
the 48217 community has done around the oil refinery pollution in
their neighborhood. By collecting the stories of folks most directly
affected by the pollution, organizers have not only used social media
sources like websites and twitter to spread the word, but have also
created a documentary about the situation, which they showed recently
at a community gathering. This work not only highlights the very real
needs of the community, it actively works to build a new narrative
around pollution, one that suggests that pollution is more than just
littering, and positions community organizing as a legitimate
response to corporate violence.

In
another example, the organization I work with, East Michigan
Environmental Action Council, sponsors a yearly Green Screen event,
where the films that young people from Detroit make about the
environment are highlighted and supported. Last year’s Green Screen
showed films featuring community gardening, the need for local
grocery stores, industrial pollution and, yes, even classroom
responses to littering.

What
other ways can community-driven media continue to build on the work
that environmental justice activists are already doing? While
community media may never be able to fund a gimmicky campaign with a
dancing owl or an actor with a single tear running down his face, I
personally don’t think that’s a bad thing. What our communities
need right now is a new way of thinking about our current problems
and the ability to imagine new answers. We need each other — and
community-centered media is just the way to start the
conversation.

Victoria
Goff is a communications coordinator at East Michigan Environmental
Action Council.